A Greenland woman’s triumph over tragedy, adversity

Petrine Hanson (left) overcame enormous difficulties to pursue a nursing career in Greenland. (PHOTO COURTESY OF PETRINE HANSON)

VICTORIA SIMIGAQ

NUUK— Young and fresh, that’s Petrine. Her magnetic smile is welcoming. But behind the beautiful face is a story.

Petrine was born May 3, 1980 in Aasiaat Napparsimavia, the general hospital for Aasiaat, a small town in northern Greenland.

Born to her late father Paalu Samuelsen, who was from a small village outside Uummannaq, her mother Karen Hansen came from a small village outside Aasiaat.

Greenland to this day still has small villages as small as Aupaluk in Nunavik scattered around the coasts. And it is quite common for villagers move to bigger towns to find work or housing.

As a result, people from different villages formed small families, such as Paalu and Karen did in the late 70’s, when Karen gave birth to their only daughter, Petrine, youngest of three siblings, including her two older brothers, one in Nuuk and the other in Ilulissat.

Petrine’s upbringing is common, but for Petrine, like many Greenlanders of the new generation, it was tough to grow up with a single mother after her father died in a boating accident when she was four years old.

His death left them with a single income and facing the difficulties of living in an economically-challenged community such as Aasiaat.

The rents are high, groceries are expensive and it is essential to have a hunter in the family to help provide food for families.

Petrine as a young child often dreamed about getting her education, having her own home and working at a stable job in order to survive in her own home country.

Consequently, she attained all of the above but it was not easy getting to where she dreamed to be today.

At first she started in Aasiaat’s elementary school and continued in the college-level high school of Aasiaat.

Before then, she dared to move to Australia in 1999 for six months to learn English.

She said she could not even form a sentence, but after speaking only English with her Australian “family,” she was able to have a conversation.

Asked why she chose Australia and not Canada or England, she replies, “Canada is too close and England sounds too boring, so I chose Australia because it is far and sounds more exciting.”

Once back in Greenland, Petrine moved to Nuuk, the capital of Greenland to be with her boyfriend.

Two years later, she was single, but had earned her hat in high school, as people say in Greenland. When one completes any degree program, they graduate with a traditional hat that looks like a sailor’s cap.

It’s a Danish tradition, but one that is still followed to this day in Greenland.

It’s also common for fresh graduates to move on to the next phase of education. For Petrine, it was applying to Peqqissaanermi Ilinniarfik, the nursing school of Greenland.

There, Petrine had to study both in Greenlandic and Danish, dealing with the challenges of theoretical studies and juggling the practicum courses, which required travelling to various places such as Aarhus, one of the main cities in Denmark.

Being in Aarhus was toughest even though it was only for four months. Petrine took on the challenge of becoming a student in the psychiatric centre for inmates— people who are a danger to the society and are ordered by the Greenlandic court system to take intensive therapy sessions away from Greenland.

Although the Greenlandic language is spoken in the center, the paperwork has to be done in Danish, difficult when medical terms are required.

Once back in her home country, Petrine then travelled to Sisimiut, another larger town in northern Greenland.

Sisimiut is known for its dog sled community as well as being a community of proud people. Like some communities in Nunavut or Nunavik, Greenland has competitive atmosphere between its people.

And Sisimiut loves to show its rich culture and prides itself as being one of the most productive towns in Greenland— which made it the perfect place for Petrine to earn her credits as a nurse.

Eventually, she returned to Nuuk to complete her class study. By spring 2008, Petrine along with seven other nursing students finally received their graduate hats. They had started as 10 students, but the remaining students were proud to finally say they’d completed their nursing school.

Asked what gave her the ability to complete a challenging study, she replies, “Imminent unammillinneq.” A Greenlandic phrase that is almost impossible to translate literally, it means to challenge yourself and only yourself.

According to her dream, Petrine went back to her hometown to be a nurse in the hospital she was born in.

But it was not easy as the staff positions were in short supply, and it is typical to see transient groups of non-local nurses and doctors who stay for only a short period of time.

Because Aasiaat is surrounded by small villages that lack medical resources, it is common for nurses to hop on a helicopter or a boat to go give medical emergencies.

Once in a while, Petrine had to stay in small places such as Attu that has less than 100 inhabitants.

It gave peace to be in such a quiet village, but it was always good to go back to the larger town of Aasiaat.

But Aasiaat was not big enough so Petrine had a drive to see more challenges, so she moved back to Nuuk to be a nurse in a bigger hospital where she now works in the surgery department.

The department is open only in the daytime, giving pre- and post-operative care to both Greenlandic and Danish patients.

To ordinary people, nursing may look like a simple job, but Petrine can speak from her experience when she says “it is a huge responsibility and it can be tiring to be with sick people every day, I have to find myself as a nurse some of the time.”

“The challenge can be both good and bad, I need to have a lot of self control dealing with medically challenged patients” she adds.

Surgeries such as appendectomies, removals of uterus, bones surgeries, abortions and of course emergency operations are among the things Petrine has to see every day.

She must also interact with Danish nurses and doctors who have little knowledge about Greenland and its people as well as the much-alive Greenlandic language.

On another level, Petrine also has to speak and learn the different dialects of Greenland. One patient may be speaking only in the eastern Greenlandic, which is the least understood dialect in Greenland, and then speak with another patient from Qaanaaq, the northern most community, which has a completely different tongue.

But beneath all the tangled knots of working in an intensive health care system, Petrine has her language as a person.

Her own way of nursing herself involves taking long walks, loving the beautiful nature of Greenland which can be therapeutic itself, berry and mussel picking, go fishing on the boat, enjoying social gatherings with friends and family and singing Greenlandic songs.

But her most recent hobby is her brand new car that she won in a drawing contest.

Petrine bought a single ticket from the fundraising contest organized by the students in Nuuk’s college school. She wanted to do two things: help the students reach their dream as she once did and gain a car to drive to her work— now you can see Petrine smiling.